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Holistic Systems

“Integrity has no need of rules.” –Albert Camus

There was an era before agriculture. In this time, things were much less defined and depended on the connection between humanity and place rather than fearfully harnessing the fertility of the Earth. Hunting and gathering was how humanity sustained itself. In order for a society to be nourished by what was present on the land, it was necessary for them to be in balance with what the land provided. The rules of these societies were created by necessity not as a method to centralize power.

While I use the hunting and gathering model as an example of sustainable culture, I am not suggesting a regressive movement. In many ways, technology has benefited humanity and may, in the end, be a contributing factor to a revolution from antiquated social systems and economic megalomania. We must never fall into the trap of blaming inanimate objects for our own failings, we have created these tools; technology is a manifestation of human consciousness. We are called to recognize the effects of our actions and our intentions, to be responsible for what we do. Regardless of where the effect lies, even if it will only be felt thousands of years from now, it is still the result of our actions. Disconnection from the future of humanity is the ultimate xenophobia.  We cannot even see our own plight as an endangered species, and when we do glimpse the truth it is terrifying.  We would rather forsake our future for momentary pleasures and profit.

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The truth has been revealed, and I’m out $100.

“This might surprise the millions of fans trying to guess who’s the genius behind the hit Web series, You Suck At Photoshop, but no, it’s not the comedian Dane Cook. It’s not Will Ferrell, either.”

Read the entire article from Time magazine, The Photoshop Guys Revealed!

These dudes suck at keeping a secret and sold out to Time magazine.  At least I don’t suck at that.  I also don’t suck at Photoshop.

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Narcissistic Nation

“Narcissistic individuals constantly strive to meet the impossibly high standards of their false self, frequently feeling frustrated and depressed by their inability to do so, but also avoiding at all costs recognizing how empty they truly feel.”[1]

The desired unified worldview for globalization is one of consumer culture. This culture drives the economy by continuing to use up resources, demanding new technology at an ever-increasing pace. In order to instill a bottomless abyss of craving, it is necessary for individuals to feel disconnected from themselves and others. This wounding is insidious and occurs through advertising, media, and even the vapid nuclear family model. It is not accidental. A deliberate and systematic campaign is being waged even now to create unthinkingly selfish “individuals” who are desperately hungry. This is the objective of the industry we call Marketing. However, there is no way to sustain this endlessly consumptive linear model. Using without returning anything, without closing the loop, without reciprocity, ends the game with nothing left. Unfortunately, narcissists cannot see beyond their own needs. They are trapped in an infantile state of need. They are without the wisdom and maturity to know how to nurture what can sustainably feed them. It’s a trap, a spiral of self-destruction that keeps them separate and keeps them hungry. It’s imperative to wake up from this nightmare and live consciously. We must reconnect and take agency over our own lives and choices. We must be compassionate and understanding with each other, and together we can learn how to stand. This, a new more holistic perspective, is in order; one that can bring much needed healing to ourselves and the Earth.

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[1] Allen D. Kanner and Mary E. Gomes, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, ed. Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen Kanner (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995), 79.

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Holy Profits

“For complex reasons, our culture allows ‘economy’ to mean only ‘money economy.’ It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement.” –Wendell Berry

The only benefit of monoculture is to allow a farmer to more easily make greater sums of money. The species of plant used is inevitably worse off for it, as it is more vulnerable to disease due to its lack of genetic variety. Of the literally thousands of potato varieties that exist, no more than twenty make up three-quarters of the total potato harvest in the United States. Monoculture makes all the steps from sowing to harvesting to selling a crop more palatable to an individual or group’s revenue. Therefore, a monoculture is a method of harnessing the Earth’s resources for financial gain, regardless of the side effects to life itself.

So what is globalization then, if it is that? It may be used as a way to reduce variety to more simply market and milk a populace for their resources, regardless of ill effects on those being used or the users themselves. This cynical view should not be seen as attempting to exclude possible good effects. However, one must also take into account the fact that international corporations have jumped on the bandwagon of this globalization movement. At the risk of sounding paranoid, why would so many corporations want to be a part of something that wasn’t going to be a boon for them? And as we’ve seen time and again, big business corporations are Machiavellian entities with very little accountability.

In the corporate world, you will hear individuals extol their belief that capitalism means maximizing their profits by any means, in order to “best serve their stockholders.” This results in corporations having an ethical blank check, as profit is the only guiding principle. Western civilization has become a materialistic society with very little reverence for life, even the lives of our own kind. The culture of separation has made it exceedingly difficult for us to care for anyone or anything “different” from us. Now corporate economist culture is making a power play to encompass the whole world with unsustainable consumerism driven by a natural human desire to feel safe and connected to others. However, despite the rhetoric, there is far less room for diversity of thought in the globalization monoculture than in the previous eras of “fragmentation.” It is much easier to market to people who share the same worldview.

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Earth, Inc.

“Advocates like to describe economic globalization as a long-term, inevitable process, the result of economic and technological forces that have simply evolved over centuries to their present form.”[1]

Accepting that national borders are merely a quaint reminder of an order long passed, what are the factors shaping the world we see today and imagine tomorrow? Who are the players on the battlefield? The new world order is, as we have established, based on economy. If economy is the basis of social systems, then obviously control of the economy is power. If the goal is to possess as much power as possible, than it follows that a global economy is the highest ideal. This is a concept central to what we know of as globalization.

Globalization is many things; first, given the current state of technology, distance and traditional borders are irrelevant. Using direct and instantaneous communication, information from any point on the globe is knowable by anyone else, anywhere else. Direct communication is in itself neutral. However, how one uses a tool is not neutral. No matter how you spin it, globalization is the movement towards a global economy. For many, globalization has led to the fostering of a sort of international culture, especially between those who use the Internet as a medium. Those who would attempt to shape the definition of globalization as noble goal might call it a “neoculture,” a way to transcend petty differences of the past. I, however, would term it a “monoculture,” with all the connotations that plague the word in its agricultural usage.

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[1] John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, ed., Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004), 32.

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Sadistic Pavlovians

“The most powerful positions are those which control some crucial area of uncertainty.”[1]

One of the most disturbing ways to achieve control is to randomly award and punish. In this way, the individual being controlled is constantly perplexed as to whether he is doing well or badly. He continues to strive for the occasional windfall and condemns himself when his “luck” fails him. Since the financial roller coaster is a shared experience, there is a common bonding with others “in the same boat” and a sort of Stockholm Syndrome persists. Perhaps it is not the game, but our willingness to play it, to believe in it, to ascribe our hopes and dreams, our progeny and our legacy to it, that makes it so sickening. How many generations of sons and daughters have become lawyers, doctors, politicians, stockbrokers, in the hopes that they, too, could play the game? The game is rigged, or rather, we are not the ones playing it, we are the pieces; we are pawns moving ahead, moving back, being sacrificed. We are being played, and on some level, we know it.

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[1] Randall Collins, Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 82.

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Hosted by a friend, PDF designed by me.  Click on the title below to view, or right click to save:

Anicent Ways for Modern Times: a journey to STONGEHENGE/GLASTONBURY and the Micheal and Mary ley lines

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In the toy chest of any ’70s child, one would most likely find “GI Joe,” “The Weeble People” and of course, “Mr. Potato Head.” These popular Hasbro toys found their forms through the hands of many artistic and technical engineers. Jack McCabe of West Kingston was one of these creators. McCabe’s young-looking, Irish face looked mischievous as he evaded dating himself in saying he “worked at Hasbro a year after the wildly successful Inch Worm was marketed.” More …

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Checkmate

“Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy.  Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics.  Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science.  And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping.”[1]

Money is an embodiment of energy; energy is synonymous with power.  He who has the gold makes the rules.  Has this cliche lost its meaning? No, how could it when all current social systems are based on hoarding.  At the entry level, this looks like multi-national corporations.  Big black shiny buildings with big sterile lobbies and sans-serifed logos.  Impersonal monoliths of wealth and power.  Is this where the power lies?  No, this is just a container, but we’re getting closer.  Okay, how about those glorious top story windowed offices with waterfront views, is it someone in there?  Not likely, real money doesn’t show up for work.  Alright, so where does money move from here?  Banks, the stock market, bonds, and mutual funds.  Now we’re getting warmer.  Okay, how about economics, the ebb and flow of money, the tides of wealth.  Is it possible that there may be people sitting at the helm of this seemingly uncontrollable process?  Check.  These are the power elite.  Is it all just a game to them?  Checkmate.

The release of “The Secret” and the subsequent fuss after it was added to Oprah’s book list has popularized a spiritual concept — that you have the power to manifest your own reality.  That thoughts become things.  This idea is rather simple, however, like most simple things it is intensely powerful.  It empowers the individual to be the master of his own destiny and not entirely the subject of the whims of fortune.  This idea is dangerous to economics, whose purpose it is to constantly reaffirm the scarcity mindset.  Feast today, for tomorrow we may die — or sell off your stock today, for tomorrow it may dive.

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[1]    William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse (Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publishing, 1991), 39.

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The Truth is Out There

“Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny.”[1]

Entertaining the idea of a “power elite” is enough to be labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” words expertly chosen to marginalize independent thought. However, the story does not end here; labels do not hinder an honest inquiry for truth. True power does not lie in the hands of nations, we have established this much, but where does it lie? Who is making the decisions? Why is so much of our government shrouded in secrecy? The military, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, even defense contractors require secret clearance just to work on government projects. And for what, national security? What are “black budget” projects anyway? Isn’t this our money? Where IS our money going?

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[1] Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100 (New York: Baen Publishing Enterprises, 1999), 68.

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